Traveller of the Century

Andrés Neuman

Hans arrives in Wandernburg, a city of uncertain location somewhere
on the border between Prussia and Saxony, late on a winter's evening.
He is planning to leave the next day, but events conspire to keep him
there almost an entire year, in which he experiences the cycle of the
seasons and a number of episodes of discovery and loss, of friendship
and separation.

He befriends an old organ-grinder, a kind of urban hermit-philosopher,
who performs in the market square but lives in a cave outside town.
And he falls in love with Sophie, the daughter of a local merchant,
who is betrothed to the heir of one of the town's leading families.

Hans' courtship of Sophie is played out in her weekly salon, along with
local intellectual dignitary Professor Mietter, a pious Catholic widow,
a Jewish merchant and his wife, Sophie's father and sometimes her fiancé
Rudi, and Alvaro, a Spaniard representing a London textile business.
Their debates include arguments over Fichte and Herder and Kant and the
possibilities of German politics, as well as debates over aesthetics and
literature. Presented through compressed dialogue, these conversations,
and the occasional reading of plays, are cleverly used for character
exposition and plot development.

"One contemporary novelist, Professor Mietter went on, has
suggested that the novel, yes, with sugar, please, the modern
novel mirrors our customs, that ideas are irrelevant and only
observation matters, and everything that happens in life is
worth writing about. An interesting notion, and one that
accounts for the prevailing bad taste, wouldn't you agree?
Any arrant nonsense or folly is worth relating simply because
it happened. This idea, said Sophie, of the modern novel
as a mirror is much bandied about these days, but what if we
ourselves were the mirrors? I mean, what if we, the readers,
were a reflection of the customs and events narrated in the novel?
This, Hans concurred, seems to me a far more attractive idea,
it means each reader becomes a kind of book. My dear, said
Rudi, hastening to show his appreciation and seizing her hand,
it's brilliant, I completely agree. The idea, Alvaro remarked,
was already invented by Cervantes."

In these meetings and through the exchange of letters, extracts from
which are given, Hans and Sophie engage in a drawn out flirtation in
which the intellectual and the sensual are fused.

Meanwhile Hans spends many evenings with the organ-grinder in his cave,
with two other regular visitors, one a farm labourer and the other a
factory worker, and sometimes Alvaro. Here the conversations are less
intellectual but just as philosophical, dwelling on the interpretation
of dreams, the meanings of flowers, the appreciation of nature, and so
forth, as well as earthier, more practical concerns.

The pace doesn't drop off once Hans and Sophie consummate their
relationship: they continue to exchange letters and begin to work
together translating poetry, which they combine with vigorous sex.
(Neuman doesn't overdo the latter, with maybe one part erotica to every
ten parts poetics.)

"What are we translating today? Sophie asked as she came in.
Realising she was in the mood for work, Hans struggled to ignore
the erection in his breeches. This effort excited her, for she
had arrived in a state of desire and felt like tormenting him
a little. But Hans's self-restraint was such that Sophie ended
up thinking he preferred to work.

...

Ah, he smiled, I've left the best until last — Novalis (your
Novalis lived in a dream world, too, Sophie contended), true,
except it wasn't fantasy that interested him, but rather
the unknown. His mysticism was, shall we say, practical.
A mysticism through which to explore the present. (I understand,
she said, but I'm surprised, wasn't he a religious poet?) No,
exactly, that's the point! I think Novalis was like Hölderlin,
his hymns describe the impossibility of overcoming the earthly
condition, when he says 'I feel in my depths, a divine weariness',
his weariness is worldly, his disillusionment is rational.
(Yes, she said, but he also wrote: 'Who, without the promise of
the skies could bear the earth and all its lies?' How do you
explain that? How can you understand Novalis without heaven?)"

(When Hans and Sophie translate English poetry, one assumes the original
El Viajero Del Siglo had Spanish versions representing their attempted
translations into German, but here we get the original English poems;
the translations of Spanish poetry will have gone the other way. Hans and
Sophie also attempt to translate poetry from Russian, which neither knows,
using dictionaries and translations into other languages.)

Most of Traveller of the Century is told from Hans' perspective,
but it occasionally ventures to those of others: Sophie's maid; the
innkeeper's family; and so forth. One subplot involves a masked rapist
who is terrorising the town's young women. Another has a comic father
and son police duo investigating these attacks. The local priest writes
reports to his bishop about what's happening in the town. And Hans
secretly teaches his inn-keeper's daughter how to read and write.

The only fantastic feature of Wandernburg is that its layout of streets
seems to change; it is quite grounded as a historical novel. A reference
to a Catalan revolt against King Ferdinand of Spain places the year as
1827 — and the Wandernburg public library already has all nine volumes
of Rotteck's Universal History, the last of which only appeared in that
year. There are some anachronisms: stock market indices didn't exist at
the time, for example, and no German town yet had a formal police force.

More significantly, many of the characters and ideas and debates
are modern. Sophie is an intellectually and sexually liberated woman,
self-confident and assured — not an impossible figure for the time but
a pretty unlikely one, especially in her early twenties. Hans himself
is not bloodless, not quite "a man without qualities", but his passions
seem slightly abstracted; Traveller of the Century is not really a
novel of character development.

Much of the conversation about ideas, in Sophie's salon or the
organ-grinder's cave or Hans' inn room, also feels contemporary,
or perhaps timeless. The debates about German identity and politics
surely reflect current concerns about the European Union. An attempt
to touch on "industrial relations" seems tacked on. And the debates
over poetry translation surely reflect modern sensibilities. This may
be dissatisfying in an abstract way, but the currency of its ideas means
that Traveller of the Century is a lot easier to read than any realistic
early nineteenth century novel of ideas could be.

In its attempt to integrate political and philosophical ideas with the
course of a romantic relationship, Traveller of the Century fits into
a long tradition of German novels. Neuman doesn't write down to his
readers, but he has produced a novel of ideas which can be appreciated
without any detailed knowledge of the politics and philosophy and poetry
of the period.

Leavened with a quiet, gentle humour and not taking itself too seriously,
Traveller of the Century is way too much fun to qualify as a "great
German novel" even if it had been written in the right language.